The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

Talking with Kotaku at E3, Ron Rosenberg, Executive Producer of Crystal Dynamics' new Lara Croft IP, gave some further information about the plans and plotting of their preboot of the Tomb Raiderfranchise.

(Terminological note - a preboot here is a franchise reboot which also acts as a prequel. In this case, the Tomb Raider IP is perhaps being split between Lara Croft (most recently and the Guardian of Light) - which will focus on the adventures of the adult, fully developed Croft portrayed by Angelina Jolie in the movie tie-ins - and Tomb Raider, which reboots here with a focus on the younger, less self-assured Lara Croft. Which is actually a pretty keen idea.)

When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character [...] They're more like 'I want to protect her.' There's this sort of dynamic of 'I'm going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her. [...] She's definitely the hero but— you're kind of like her helper. When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character.

This quote raises an interesting question for games journalists: at what point is it OK to ask somebody if they have actually said what they just said, and whether they would like to say it again?

Of course, there is always more context to a spoken interview, and people often do not say exactly what they mean to say - but this quote, as it stands, suggests one of two possible interpretations:

1) When people - of both genders - play Lara, they don't project themselves into the character.

2) "People" here means men, and the experience of female gamers with Lara Croft is not being considered.

Either of these is possible. Lara Croft is a difficult figure in the context of women in games; on the one hand, there is much to admire about her lifestyle - she jets from country to country, acrobatically stealing ancient treasures, before returning to her mansion, with butler, to enjoy the life of a landed lady of leisure until the next adventure.

Balanced against that is the decision taken by her original design team (and subsequently scaled back in various iterations) to give her the figure of Jessica Rabbit.

However, the anecdata I have received from female gamers suggests that, whether by accident or design, Core Design did succeed in creating a character female players could identify with, or at least metaspacially occupy. "[I] found her both intimidating and aspirational, athletically," said one female gamer by Twitter, "But I 'inhabited' her as a character like any other avatar"

Sophie Sampson, a writer and producer of games, and a lifelong gamer, gave me a fuller response by email. Her response to the question of Croft, and of identity within games was illuminating:

I love big sprawling RPGs where the protagonist is featureless and you get to project yourself onto them - Fallout 3, Skyrim. They'll give you the option of creating an avatar that is either male or female, and customizing them, and I'll always choose a female with short hair, however else I play with the character selector. The games are designed for you to project - everything about your character is up to you.

There's only a few games where the central character is female for everyone. Mass Effect has done a great job with Jennifer Hale [the voice actor of the female Commander Shepard, a player character who can be male or female] of making a female protagonist who is more than just a vessel for you to project on, but instead an actual strong person who has a life separate from the player. Perhaps sensibly, being female is optional [sc. because market wisdom says that male gamers are reluctant to play female characters].

Tomb Raider has historically done much less to give Lara a character outside your projection of yourself onto her, and somewhere among all the making impossible, death defying leaps a hundred feet above the ground, I started projecting into this character who was always calm in the face of danger, and never showed weakness, however bad things got.

Given the various approaches to Lara Croft taken in the character's 16-year life, and the variety of approaches to gaming, this does not seem exceptional. How people feel about the characters on screen following their instructions is complicated, and resists top-down influence. Sampson again:

That's why I now feel betrayed by the new characterization. If it was Commander Shepard's origin story then fine. But telling me that no-one projects into Lara is simply telling me I am statistically negligible [...] Early Tomb Raiders were one of the few times I could look up onto the screen and say yeah, there's someone like me. But I don't want to be like new Lara. And it's fine if they've decided you shouldn't project into this character, she should be someone you're helping, but it's a bit late for me.